3-057-303 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Map of Europe, 1570. The traditional portolan chart - the large, single-sheet, hand-drawn map of the Mediterranean region - still flourished a full century after the advent of map printing. It marked latitude but not longitude, was almost always drawn at a scale of 1:6 million, and lacked any interest in northern Europe. In this example, Britain and Scandinavia are inaccurately mapped, and the Baltic fades into a blank emptiness.